UDAAN
Escalating land prices in Mumbai is forcing out the families that serve the privileged classes. The domestic help, drivers, sweepers, peons etc are the invisible cogs that daily ensure smooth running of the city. Currently they are being dis-housed from their decades old housing, since this has caught the eye of developers; and they are forced to relocate further from their primary sources of income. Currently, this segment forms 50-60 % of the urban population of Mumbai. The commute between home and work thus becomes a critical factor in site selection. If this isn’t handled adequately (eg, the commute is a 2hr+ journey each way), the new homes get rented out and the people return to squat closer to their places of work.
Mohameddi Park
In this competition, the plot under consideration, located in Karachi were separated by a thoroughfare, and the Mosques were to be the anchor points of this community development. After various iterations of grid planning, street development, row house development, etc., we settled upon a mixed cluster development plan.
Climatically, shaded pathways provided maximum benefit to the community as they went through their daily activities, to the mosque and back many times a day and thus became the cornerstone of the mixed cluster development plan. – Sameep Padora and Associates
Lokmanch – Satara Municipal Corporation
Government Institutions were once designed at monumental scales, perhaps to inspire the citizens they were meant to serve. Over time the this resultant impervious, opaque and domineering presence of the institutional building has only served to distance the citizen from the institution. The proposal for the Municipal Building of Satara attempts to rework the physical nature & experience of the institution. Imbibing abstracted ideals from the defining features of Satara including the seven hills the Kaas plateau, step well, rajwada and the fort our project is inspired by the setting and context of the city.
Galeecha Pavilion ’09
The concept of sustainability lies at the heart of the design philosophy behind this temporary structure, crafted with a keen awareness of the environmental impact typically associated with trade show exhibits. Unlike conventional structures that often contribute to wasteful practices, this pavilion represents a bold departure by prioritizing recyclability and eco-consciousness in its design and construction.
KJ Somaiya College For Information Technology
The IT College building is an addition to the K.J. Somaiya Institute of Engineering on their Sion campus in Northern Mumbai. The site for the new building was flanked on one end by a cement plant, on another by a contaminated rivulet, and the west by the existing 8 stories engineering college building.
Goel Ganga School
The competition brief for the GG School in Pune presented a unique challenge: to accommodate three separate schools within a single site. In response, the design was articulated to not only meet the requirements of the brief but also leveraged the shared resources and programs of the individual schools to create a cohesive and innovative learning environment.
Welspun Energy
The design for the Welspun Energy head office in Mumbai mimics traditional village open space/courtyard structures in an attempt to create non-hierarchical social spaces that encourage dialogue between the staff.
Bhavishya, Catalyzing Urban Space
Our proposal attempts to ground the project by linking it to projective networks of transportation, housing as imagined by the Development Plan of the city. The site for this project lies along the fast urbanizing S.G. Highway, along what used to be the edge of the city of Ahmedabad. The program constitutes a mixed-use program of retail, office and residential space. Typically projects of this scale tend to be in most cases isolated bubbles of development at many times at odds with the city fabrics that they are located in, almost parasitic in nature whereby they feed of infrastructural networks of the city without contributing directly contributing to its vitality. Our proposal attempts to ground the project by linking it to projective networks of transportation, housing as imagined by the Development Plan of the city. We then propose to build and maintain a non-existent greenway listed in the D.P. from the nearest BRTS stop to our site and then further extend the public green as a shaded plaza onto our site. The attempt is to create a model of private development that creates an urban open space for the city in an area severely lacking of the same, with programs of retail flanking it on the ground floor as well as on tiered terraces that step back from the plaza. Tying into a local government scheme that is largely defunct, a dry waste recycling unit is proposed within the development that by sorting, packaging and shipping recycled stacks to wholesalers is able to monetize the recycling service, which might over time service adjoining developments as well.
Split House
The vacation home in Mahabaleshwar, situated on two combined plots within a gated community, presented a unique challenge due to its larger size compared to adjacent houses. To maintain visual harmony with neighboring properties and address concerns about potential simian threats, we devised an innovative design approach that reimagined the traditional courtyard organization.
SARK One
SARK ONE is conceived as a boutique gated community that redefines the traditional approach to residential design, focusing on both macro and micro-level interventions to create a unique living experience. At a macro level, the community is structured around a kilometer-long landscape strip that serves as a green buffer, providing relief from the harsh summer sun and enhancing the overall environmental quality of the development.